Re: [RFC] Design for flag bit outputs from asms

[Richard Henderson]

On 05/04/2015 01:14 PM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 05/04/2015 12:33 PM, Richard Henderson wrote:
>>
>> (0) The C level output variable should be an integral type, from bool on up.
>>
>> The flags are a scarse resource, easily clobbered.  We cannot allow user code
>> to keep data in the flags.  While x86 does have lahf/sahf, they don't exactly
>> perform well.  And other targets like arm don't even have that bad option.
>>
>> Therefore, the language level semantics are that the output is a boolean store
>> into the variable with a condition specified by a magic constraint.
>>
>> That said, just like the compiler should be able to optimize
>>
>>         void bar(int y)
>>         {
>>           int x = (y <= 0);
>>           if (x) foo();
>>         }
>>
>> such that we only use a single compare against y, the expectation is that
>> within a similarly constrained context the compiler will not require two tests
>> for these boolean outputs.
>>
>> Therefore:
>>
>> (1) Each target defines a set of constraint strings,
>>
>>    E.g. for x86, wherein we're almost out of constraint letters,
>>
>>      ja   aux carry flag
>>      jc   carry flag
>>      jo   overflow flag
>>      jp   parity flag
>>      js   sign flag
>>      jz   zero flag
>>
> 
> I would argue that for x86 what you actually want is to model the
> *conditions* that are available on the flags, not the flags themselves.
>  There are 16 such conditions, 8 if we discard the inversions.

A fair point.  Though honestly, I was hoping that this feature would mostly be
used for conditions that are "weird" -- that is, not normally describable by
arithmetic at all.  Otherwise, why are you using inline asm for it?

> It is notable that the auxiliary carry flag has no Jcc/SETcc/CMOVcc
> instructions; it is only ever consumed by the DAA/DAS instructions which
> makes it pointless to try to model it in a compiler any more than, say, IF.

Oh yeah.  Consider that dropped.


r~
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